Week 4 Ratings: "Race" Stumbles

CBS's "The Amazing Race 5" stumbled a bit in the ratings for its fourth episode (7/27), although don't start feeling too sorry for the reality series.

It was the highest-viewed series on the night, coming in with 9.78 million viewers and a 6.7/10 rating and share. NBC's competing "Law & Order: SVU" took home the gold in ratings, but had to settle for the silver behind "Race" in viewers.

Lead-in "Big Brother 5" also found itself in the winner's circle, averaging 8.65 million viewers (5.9/9).

So far this season, CBS's strategy of using "BB" to lure more viewers to "Race" has worked. "Race" has yet to draw fewers viewers than "BB".

That last set of numbers, the 18-49 year-old demographic is the most important for the traditionally older skewing CBS. At least for this summer, "BB" and "Race" are getting the grey out of CBS's Tuesday night viewership.

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To compare this season with other seasons, "Race", this fourth episode is still the second highest rated fourth episode in "Race" history (only the fourth episode of season 2 did better; the other seasons fourth episodes didn't even crack 9 million viewers). Despite this bump in the road, this season of "Race" is still the highest rated thus far. The next challenge will be NBC's upcoming Olympic coverage.

Usually the Metered Market numbers are a little higher than the Fast National Numbers, but each get their information from Nielsen Media Research, so I wouldn't claim one is better than the other.

For instance,

Both sources (The Futon Critic, Zap2it, Mediaweek, etc.) noted Fox's "Trading Spouses" was the highest ranked 18-49 year old democraphic series. Both noted that "Race" declined in viewership totals from last week. Both sources had "Race" in first for the night - in viewers, if not in ratings.

Week 1 they said 7.3/11 (actually 6.4/11), week 2 they said 7.2/11 (actually 6.4/11), week 3 they said 7.8/12 (actually 6.9/12)...while Zap2it at most has been off by only .1 of a rating point.

After week 2 I stopped using them. Zap2It and TheFutoncritic (which hasn't posted its ratings yet) have been the sources i'm using and have shown to be reliable in the final ratings.

However, I have no doubt that next weeks ratings are higher than 6.1/10 and 9.8 million viewers since many eastern & central CBS local stations pre-empted TAR due to the democrat convention which is probably why the drop of Ratings of TV shows dropped today, and this week.

While I'm not sure how much of a negative impact the Democratic Convention had on "Race", but once the final ratings are announced, "Race" should be pushed back up over 10 million viewers, more in line with the first two episodes.

I agree with you on over 10 mil viewers, but not close to the 3rd episode ratings bonanza we saw (6.9 rating, 11+ million viewers).

Remember, if a TAR episode is pre-empted by a local station, for that area, no ratings count for TAR. I know chicago pre-empted the first 10-20 minutes or so (which could have knocked out A LOT of viewers), and I'm sure other CBS local stations pre-empted it to leading to a .3-.7 ratings drop, so maybe TAR can squeeze out a 6.2-6.5 for this ep in final ratings.

However, there is a benefit to this. TAR is #2 so far this week in viewers/ranking since Everybody Loves Ray and 2 1/2 men are out with a 5.5 rating each. WAT, L&O, and L&O: SVU are out too pushing TAR from 8th last week...to 3rd this week possibly if 60 minutes sunday and cold case are under a 6.1 rating.

This was a good episode tonight but I dont think it was as good as the first three...it felt too short and rushed and Russia didn't seem all that exciting in my opinion...

Next week though EGYPT, going to love that

I agree!! The last three teams where largely ignored for most of the episode, from about 15 minutes after until only 10 minutes was left. Then, all three teams saw their mission crammed into those last 10 minutes.

I realize the other teams were probably hour(s) behind the earlier teams, but the episode did feel rushed, and Russia was kind of bland, after being in South America for the past three weeks.